Photo Friday: Homemade Veggie Stock

For all the things I don’t mind spending my money on, I feel increasingly ridiculous spending $2 – $3 for a quart of vegetable stock. I know, silly right? Recently, I finally snapped. I was buying onions, and carrots, and other good veggies for my pantry anyway. Why not use a few of them to make my own vegetable stock.

Loads of veggies went into water along with salt and pepper. It was brought to a boil, then simmered away for most of the day until the veggies were tender and the broth looked nice and dark.

I placed a plastic strainer in a larger bowl and poured the whole mess through it. Lifting the strainer out left me with the cooked veggies in the strainer and the broth in the bowl.

I froze the majority of the vegetable stock as 1 cup in a freezer bag. Freezer bags were placed flat on a cookie sheet and allowed to freeze hard. Then they were stacked in my freezer and the cookie sheet picked back up. I think I use those sheet pans to freeze stuff more than I use them to bake cookies!

I grabbed two ice trays I haven’t been using and filled them with vegetable stock. This was a most excellent idea! I picked up these trays quite some time back from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. You can get them from Amazon too. This was a great idea, as far as I was concerned. I feel like the little cups are protected. 3 cubes = about 1/3 cup of vegetable stock. The perfect amount for some recipes I’ve been trying lately, like the recent tofu stirfry.

This was great. I plan to make more stock soon so I have plenty in the fridge!

Be the bento everyone!

And p.s. Happy Friday the 13th!

*Links to ice cube trays are not affiliated links and garner no income for Not Exactly Bento.